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3D Forged has released a list of “Top 3D Printing Schools in the Country”, with the University of Michigan being included alongside other institutions like MIT, Columbia & Stanford. Their list is based off of 3D printing facilities available, breakthroughs in the technology, and other contributions to the industry. The University of Michigan offers access to 3D …

Jaw surgery can be complex and there are many factors that contribute to how a procedure is done. From routine corrective surgery to reconstructive surgery, the traditional means of teaching these scenarios has been unchanged for years. In an age populated with computers and the growing popularity of virtual reality, students still find themselves moving …

Those with spinal cord injuries (SCI) encounter a drastically different world when they are released from the hospital. With varying degrees of disability, mobility and function, the world around them becomes a collection of physical and mental challenges which is a complete departure from their previous lifestyles. Whether they are in crutches or manual/automatic wheelchairs, …

Research fellow Lia Min will be exhibiting “RAW” in the 3D lab’s MIDEN April 7 & 8th from 4 – 6pm. All are welcome to attend. Lia Min’s exhibit is an intersection of art and science, assembled through her training as a neuroscientist. Her data set, commonly referred to as a “Brainbow“, focuses on a lobe of a fruit …

The Discovery Channel (Canada) spent a day in the library’s Michigan Immersive Digital Experience Nexus (MIDEN) on north campus. As part of Daily Planet’s “Future Tech”, Ted Hall was interviewed about the use of the Library’s MIDEN space. “The MIDEN is a 10x10x10 room with stereoscopic projection on three walls and the floor, and with …

As part of the Kelsey museum’s most grandiose exhibition to date, Leisure & Luxury in the Age of Nero: The Villas of Oplontis Near Pompeii features over 230 artifacts from the ancient world. These artifacts originate from the ancient villa of Oplontis, an area near Pompeii that was destroyed when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. The traveling …

The UM 3D Lab’s MIDEN is featured on the cover of the Michigan Alumnus late fall 2105 with the caption “Libraries of the Future”. This tribute to Michigan’s high-tech libraries is continued on page 36 with an article that explores the new additions to our libraries that enhance student and instructor experiences. The article introduces …

Sonification is the conversion of data sets to audio files. Robert Alexander II is a Sonification Specialist working with NASA, who uses satellite recordings of the sun’s emissions to discover new solar phenomena. The 3D Lab and Design Lab worked with Robert to produce a short video explaining the concept of data audification. Recently Robert was featured …

Lyuba will be on display during the following times November 17th – 19th: Showings will take place in the 3D Lab’s MIDEN (Room 1401, 3D Cave) in the Duderstadt Center’s Digital Media Commons. For directions, click here. More about the Lyuba specimen: Fisher, …

Proto is a natural science magazine produced by Massachusetts General Hospital in collaboration with Time Inc. Content Solutions. Launched in 2005, the magazine covers topics in the field of biomedicine and health care, targeting physicians, researchers and policy makers. In June, Proto featured an article, “Mortal Remains” that discusses alternatives to using real cadavers in the study …

The Anatomage table is a technologically advanced anatomy visualization system that allows users to explore the complex anatomy of the human body in digital form, eliminating the need for a human cadaver. The table presents a human figure at 1:1 scale, and utilizes data from the Visible Human effort with the additional capability of loading real …

Recently Ted Hall and Stephanie O’Malley of the UM3D Lab were interviewed by Christina Czuhajewski, a student at the School of Information, for her article featured on the “Hack Library School” blog. Christina’s contribution to the blog focuses on the role of visualization experts in the library. My typical day involves spending as much time …

The Museum of Natural History will soon be the host of several animations produced by the 3D Lab covering an array of space-related subjects. From understanding the behavior of black holes, to demonstrations of the life cycle of stars, Stephanie O’Malley, Interactive Imaging and Production Specialist at the UM3D lab, has created the animations in collaboration with …

Robert Alexander is a Design Science Ph.D. Graduate and member of the Solar and Heliospheric Research Group. Working with NASA, Robert aims to use data audification to teach us something new about the Sun’s solar wind and is using mixed media coupled with unique interaction methods to pull viewers into the experience. Video created by: Robert …

Rachael Miller and Carlos Garcia discuss how their individual experiences with the Digital Media Commons (DMC) shaped their projects and ambitions. Rachael, an undergraduate in computer science, was able to expand her horizons by working in the 3D Lab on projects which dealt with virtual reality. She gained vital knowledge about motion capture by …

Robert Alexander, a graduate student at the University of Michigan, represents what students can do in the Digital Media Commons (DMC), a service of the Library, if they take the time to embrace their ideas and use the resources available to them. In the video above, he talks about the projects, culture, and resources available …

The Virtual Cadaver is a visualization of data provided by the Visible Human Project of the National Library of Medicine. This project aimed to create a digital image dataset of complete human male and female cadavers. The male dataset originate from Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 38-year-old convicted Texas murderer who was executed by lethal injection. …

Over the years the 3D Lab has provided its services of visualization for a variety of NASA Proposals. Submitting a proposal requires a packet of information and visual aids that follow a strict format and series of guidelines. Most recently, the 3D Lab assisted with the Mars Radar and Radiometry Subsurface Investigation (MARRSI) proposal. This …

SCI-Hard Preview on the iPad Recently, the University of Michigan received a prestigious 5 million dollar Center Grant, awarded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR), part of the Department of Education. The funds from this award will primarily be used to pursue several development, research, and training projects/studies involving technology interventions …

Sometimes a mess of data is just a mess of data. But sometimes, as Dr. Suresh Bhavnani discovered, it is an opportunity for a new type of visualization. Ted Hall, advanced visualization specialist at the University of Michigan’s 3D Lab, set up an immersive stereoscopic projection of Bhavnani’s data in the MIDEN (Michigan Immersive Digital …

A journalist for StateTech Magazine interviewed Ted Hall (Advanced Visualization Specialist) and Rachael Miller (undergraduate student in Computer Science) regarding the 3D Lab’s work with natural user interfaces (NUIs) and their possible applications for state and local government. An article derived from the interview appears in the Spring 2013 issue (page 16) and is also …

Dr. Alexandre DaSilva discusses his research with respect to opioid activation during a migrain attack which features the MIDEN. From U-M News: ANN ARBOR—Wielding a joystick and wearing special glasses, pain researcher Alexandre DaSilva rotates and slices apart a large, colorful, 3-D brain floating in space before him. Despite the white lab coat, it appears …

FAAC Incorporated provides system engineering and software products including driving simulators for commercial and private training. FAAC reached out to the UM3D Lab to share information and to compare their system performance to the MIDEN’s capabilities. The UM3D Lab had developed an “urban neighborhood” model as a stress test: how big and highest number of …

Pain affects everyone, and is one of the main reasons patients seek medical attention—but the study of pain is significantly restricted by methods of measurement which are rudimentary (how much does it hurt?) and unreliable because it has no accurate, consistent method or baseline off which to measure another person’s perceived pain. Enter Dr. …

Moji Navvab has published another article regarding his lighting analysis of virtual reality: “Область Поддающихся Измерению Цветовых Различий в Виртуальной Среде” (“Measurable Domain for Colour Differences within a Virtual Environment”), in, Светотехника (Light & Engineering). The article, in English and Russian, can be downloaded from here and is also embedded below:

In December of 2012, The University of Michigan held a mobile app competition to showcase new apps developed within the university and encourage the developer community to create innovative mobile designs. U-M students, faculty, and staff submitted a variety of apps from many different disciplines and genres. The event was sponsored and judged by individuals …

In 1998, Dan Buesching found part of a mastodon skull that had been buried for nearly 12,000 years. In conjunction with Tech Transfer, the Buesching family has agreed to let the University of Michigan create accurate plaster casts of the excavated mastodon for research and educational purposes. Preserving information about mastodons in both …

A car’s fascia, or instrumental dashboard containing speedometers, odometers, and the like, is often a signature design element of a car. Traditionally, fascias are modeled first with clay (industrial plasticine) and then with computer-aided industrial design applications. The controls behind the fascia are usually separate, analogue controls and gauges. While an intern at Bosch, Mechanical …

Stefan Taube, while a postdoctoral fellow in the Wobus laboratory at the University of Michigan, created these models as a learning tool for his classroom. In order to show his students how viruses connect. Through X-ray crystallography and cryo-electronmicroscopy, atomic structures of these viruses were determined with Jeanne Stuckey and colleagues from the Center …

The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) has produced a project that has Ann Arbor talking—even its cars and traffic lights. With funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation, UMRTI has designed a test drive scenario, installing 3,000 cars with a variety of devices: the Vehicle Awareness Device (VAD) transmits the vehicle’s speed …

University of Michigan News Services recently wrote an article on the release of PainTrek and it’s use for the treating pain in patients. PainTrek is an innovative computer/mobile application that measures pain area and progression in a particular subject or group of patients using a unique and accurate anatomical 3D system.

Of the 96-year life of the University’s Aerospace program, Assistant Professor James Culter has been here for 4, and yet has already produced 3 satellites. Part of their speed, says Joshua Weiss, a senior aerospace engineer and researcher in Cutler’s lab, is the ability to produce designs quickly and cheaply through rapid prototyping. They most …

Rachael Miller and Rob Soltesz presented their summer work on Kinect development, natural user interfaces, and capturing emotive qualities of users at the 2012 UROP Symposium for MSTEM. Rachael won a Blue Ribbon at the event for her poster and they are both the first (that I know of) who have successfully used multiple Kinects in …

Through some innovative work done by Dr. Alexandre Dasilva and his team in the School of Dentistry, the UM3D Lab was presented with some exciting new data related to migraines and their effect on the brain. We had to quickly turn the data into an image suitable for a pending journal submission. While we can’t …

Genetic algorithms aim to mimic natural selection in the design process. A set of parameters or “genes” characterize a “species” of artifact. Individuals within the species express different values for those genes. A fitness function evaluates each individual’s health. The algorithm works by assigning random gene values for several individuals, evaluating them, discarding the weakest …

Theodore W. Hall, Mojtaba Navvab, Eric Maslowski, and Sean Petty have authored an invited chapter, “Virtual Reality as a Surrogate Sensory Environment,” for the book, Advances in Robotics and Virtual Reality (Chapter 11, p. 251-273). The chapter summarizes lessons learned from past and current simulation projects in the MIDEN as well as analysis of its …

A six-inch robotic spy plane modeled after a bat would gather data from sights, sounds and smells in urban combat zones and transmit information back to a soldier in real time. That’s the Army’s concept, and it has awarded the University of Michigan College of Engineering a five-year, $10-million grant to help make it happen. …

Dentists and Medical Professionals are often presented with unique challenges when it comes to describing rare phenomena. How does one show the rarity when it occurs in a human being. Images and scans are often used for this purpose but they don’t quite compare to what is seen in person on a live 3D model. …

The Virtual Jet Ski Driving Simulator allows a user to drive a jet ski (or personal watercraft) through a lake environment that is presented in an immersive virtual reality MIDEN system. The user sits on a jet ski mockup and controls the ride via handlebar and throttle. While the mockup is stationary (does not move), …

One of the biggest problems with interactive applications is how to suck the user into the experience, suspending their sense of disbelief so that they are completely immersed in the virtual world created for them. After receiving the extremely powerful SDK and accelerators from Ageia (now NVIDIA), we aimed to use this technology to bring …

The UM3D Lab has utilized Linden Labs’ Second Life source code to develop a stereoscopic viewer which allows for a truly unique Second Life experience. This custom viewer allows the user to see Second Life in 3D on everything from a simple desktop monitor to advanced projection systems similar to IMAX theatres. Through a request …

The way we stage, organize and construct our environment will determine what roles we play in society. If the arrangement is to maximize the revenue and return to bankers, then the society will become an investment game. The focus will become dollars or any number of sophisticated, market oriented strategic economic situations which essentially ignore …

This model of a ribcage and spine was recreated with data from 1 mm thick slices of a human body for the University of Michigan Visible Human Project (UMVHP). This project, a collaboration of the U-M Medical School and National Library of Medicine, aims to enhance anatomy and research education through visualization. A 3D volume rendering like this …

This ongoing project is an interdisciplinary effort at the University of Michigan involving the Medical Center, the Department of Emergency Medicine, the Digital Media Commons (formerly the Media Union), and the Virtual Reality Laboratory at the College of Engineering. The objective is the development of a “Virtual Reality-Enhanced Medical Readiness Trainer” (MRT) that integrates advanced …